PHP 7 vs PHP 5 syntax issue

[farse]

In PHP 5, I conventionally opened my pages with <?php but within the pages I often used <? to open a php block, e.g., <?echo $variable; ?>.

In PHP 7, I find it is necessary to always use <?php and follow it with  a space, e.g., <?php echo $variable; ?>

I haven't been able to find any reference to this syntax change so my question:  Is this a new requirement of PHP 7? Can it be turned off?

Otherwise, I will need to edit all of the sites where my earlier habit was used, which I think I can do but would feel compelled to spend some hours testing afterward.

[dsonesuk]

I believe you can set it to accept both. Short tags and long tags.

[Funce]

As an alternative with your <? echo $var ?> blocks, you can use <?= $var; ?>. This can be used regardless of the php_short_tags setting, which you can read up on here: https://www.php.net/manual/en/language.basic-syntax.phptags.php